This morning, on a rare feat, composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross got two Original Track nominations for Soul and Mank.
Throughout the history of cinema, we have often seen a single composer win two Oscar nominations for different films in the same year. The most recent to do so was Alexandre Desplat, nominated in 2014 for both The imitation game and The Grand Budapest Hotel. (Desplat won for the last film).
But the composer pairs are something else.
While Edward Plumb and Paul Smith won two Score nominations in 1943, for the films Saludos Friends and Victory by Airpower, these came in the separate categories of Musical score for a dramatic or comedy picture and Score for a musical picture.
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In the modern era, where Score is condensed into one category, only Reznor and Ross were nominated as a pair in two separate films over the course of a season.
Directed by longtime collaborator David Fincher, Netflix drama Mank is a love letter and a critique of the Golden Age of Hollywood, following alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) as he completes the script for Citizen Kane.
Soul, directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers, focuses on Joe (Jamie Foxx), a frustrated high school band teacher who seeks to return to Earth, to fulfill his dreams of performing as a jazz musician after a sudden accident separates you from your body.
Sharing your Soul named with Jon Batiste, Reznor and Ross are on a hot tide. Coming from an Emmy win for watchmakers, the duo (also known for their industrial rock band, Nine Inch Nails) returns to the Oscar competition, after taking home the statuette of their original score for Fincher The social network in 2011.
This award season, both Soul and Mank established themselves as pioneers in Original Score from the beginning. So far, Reznor and Ross’s score for Soul won a Golden Globe, along with a Critics’ Choice Award and one from the Society of Composers and Lyricists. Other nominations came from the BAFTA and the Annie Awards.
The duo Mank The score, however, was nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award and a Critics’ Choice Award. At the SCL Awards, Reznor and Ross scored two nominations for Mank, the latter recognizing his music, “(If only you could) Save me.”
While Reznor and Ross will be hard to beat at the Oscars this year, their competitors in the Score category are formidable.
Nominated eight times in the past, James Newton Howard will seek his first victory, with his score for Paul Greengrass’s Western, World News. Like the composer behind Minari, Emile Mosseri enters the race for the first time, while Terence Blanchard returns, having secured his first nomination for Spike Lee’s previous feature, BlacKkKlansman.